Research trends in memes: insights from bibliometric analysis

Purpose The growth of social media globally has led to brands adopting memes as a tool for communication. They have influenced digital culture, politics and marketing. This study aims to highlight the research gap in meme literature by profiling and science mapping. Design/methodology/approach This study has performed a bibliometric analysis of research papers on memes from the Scopus database. The authors profiled the literature and found the most relevant journal, author and document. Science mapping techniques such as thematic analysis, thematic evolution and co-citation of papers with content analysis were used. Findings Profiling of literature revealed that the most relevant journal, based on a number of papers and citations, is New Media and Society. The top researcher on memes is Shiffman L (seven papers), and the most cited author is Menczer F (717 citations). The paper titled “Towards A Unified Science of Cultural Evolution” has the highest number of citations (402). Thematic mapping revealed “Social Movements” and “Twitter” are the currently trending themes. The co-citation analysis clustered the literature into two. The first cluster elucidates the theoretical underpinnings of memes, while the second cluster explicates the various contexts in which memes are studied. Practical implications This study will be vital to researchers hoping to study internet memes by providing directions for future research. Furthermore, the insights from this study will enable social media managers to use memes effectively. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study seems to be the first to use bibliometric analysis to profile and map meme literature. This study provides a new perspective for meme researchers to explore memes and suggests marketers implement novel meme-based strategies in their marketing communications.